Days Like These
by Sueg5123
Summary: You only avoid talking about those things that matter the most.


_**A/N**__: Apologies to Mr. Daniels, for having swiped the title._

Another week.

_Now. This._

On one hand, the timing seemed so incredibly shitty. Almost cosmically shitty. And, on the other hand, it seemed to perfectly dovetail with Everything Else.

ACN in a decaying orbit. Neal on the lam in another hemisphere. The Lansings having sold out. Sloan and Charlie having abdicated their combined professional responsibilities in order to be profoundly awful makers of LBOs. The newsroom staff disintegrating, one by one, as the non-story of the leaker sucked energy and morale. Only Elliot, Don, and the reconstituted Maggie were holding the nightly broadcasts together.

Will, incarcerated. Two weeks already, and no end in sight.

Where the fuck was Rebecca and why hadn't she worked a procedural miracle?

Was Pruitt still smirking with self-satisfaction about the ratings boost lent by ACN's prize anchor dwelling simultaneously in the hoose-gow and the headlines?

Was Cedarman convinced yet that Will couldn't be coerced into revealing the source?

How about Lasenthal? What was his comfort level now that Will had been championed by most media outlets (The National Review and Fox News excepted)?

(Was Jim's studied conviviality masking a split with Hallie?)

_You only avoid talking about those things that matter the most._

Everyone was emotionally inaccessible right now. Who could Mac possibly talk to? Who could she lay _this_ on? She came close with Jenna, who had walked in the fifth morning after the notorious anchor perp walk and found Mac's composure crumbled near cooling coffee. Jenna's eyes had darted through the glass door back to the bullpen, knowing she had to prevent anyone else intruding on Mac's pain and privacy. Then, she had put an awkward hand on Mac's shoulder as she dry-sobbed.

Jenna understood about separation and love but was not yet alert to the potential for _small, almost-undetectable problems at inconvenient moments_.

Mac had come close to confiding in Jenna that morning, a comradeship born of necessity and chance, but was stopped by the ring of the phone. _Saved by the bell_.

MacKenzie could appreciate the irony.

Irony, of course, had become the lingua franca of her life lately. Nowhere was that more evident than in understanding she was damned for what she knew of the leak and leaker and damned for being unable to do anything about it. Fuck professional ethics. Mustn't ruin Will's moment. The noble self-sacrifice. Whatever it was that he (_and Reese_) believed he was doing for her.

She wanted to scream.

And now _this_.

A small lump where it should not be. Where it should not have been found by _her_ fingers in the shower. The statistical inevitability among women of a certain age.

And now it had been four days and the doctor was alarmed enough to progress from mammography to ultrasounds to procedures. Her own uncertainty was amplified by the solitariness of it all.

And, of course, Mac knew that this was the only thing that would make Will roll over, give Lasenthal and the FBI what they wanted.

Surely she could find some reservoir of strength, something deep and as-yet untapped, something to get her through. At least until Will could prove his point and come home on his own terms. And then they could rely on each other, stop the ridiculous dance of mutual assured destruction and concentrate on moving forward together. As they had after Election Night, when the glorious proposal nearly unraveled over weeks of missed connections in the bedroom—when all the shit she had been carrying [_time together, time apart, more time apart, a ring, professional credibility, lawsuits_] so dammed her up that they moved from ardor to desperation before she was finally finally finally able to just let go, let it all go, and return to something they could remember as normalcy.

Mac still had a hard time remembering normalcy.

And all she had right now was a reservoir of mischance, of tragicomic events.

She finally realized a truth she had glossed over six years ago: that leaving is the easier part. It's much harder to be left.

The Q train ran from Bryant Park to Canal Street, and it was a two block walk from there to the White Street Correctional Facility. There were only three opportunities each week for visitation with inmates having last names beginning M-Z. No visitation at all on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the weekends were so crowded and frenetic. The optimum days, Mac had discovered, were Wednesdays and Thursdays. They weren't rushed, they weren't hassled.

Today was Thursday. One day shy of a two week anniversary.

Mac began the stilted choreography of visitation. Proof of identification. The _pro forma_ questions. Scanner and pat down, scrutinized for contraband.

She had brought something for him, she always did. Of the few permissible items, he was allowed virtually unrestricted access to research and writing materials. So today she had brought more yellow legal tablets, the maximum-permitted six pencils (_sans erasers, because those weren't permissible_), and a separate gum eraser.

Will had picked a helluva time to quit smoking. Another comic injustice.

His hand was naked, because prisoners are not permitted jewelry, and his pleasure at seeing her drained to concern.

"You look tired."

She could feel the words stopping up again. "I'm good." She forced a smile. _Try again. _ _No point in gilding that lily._ "I'm okay, Will."


End file.
